One-Seventh All Right (So Far)
Apr. 25th, 2017 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerI am taking my time watching through the revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000; hour-and-a-half blocks of time are valuable and very often fine-sliced commodities for me. As I got to the second episode, I suppose I was thinking a bit of a comment or two just seen of this somehow being a moment where the revived series had to prove itself all over again and climb past "the novelty of a first episode," and I did even wonder a bit how I was taking the first minutes of "Cry Wilderness." As with quite a few of the original episodes, though, the humour seemed to build in a cumulative fashion. The movie itself perhaps wasn't quite as "high concept" as "a giant monster movie set in Denmark," but it packed plenty of absurdity all the same.
Then, all of a sudden, one of the "riffs" was a tossed-off reference from Revenge of the Sith. Having dwelt more than I ought to on the Russian-roulette feeling of "having things hit too close," it took me an electric moment to process the reference and admit there seemed no particle of "going on to invite the audience to wallow in shared contempt." Mentioning one of the new Star Wars movies as if it's any other reference was really all I could have asked for. Of course, I still don't know what'll happen with a movie that invites more of those specific references, but there may yet be a balance between "setting myself up that much further for an unfortunate overreaction" and "managing to find a tiny bit more confidence."
In any case, that I've reacted with relief twice now perhaps lets me just sort of accept things I've seen a few mixed opinions of. While Crow and Tom Servo's new voices seem distinct enough in the "host segments," everybody's voices do sort of blend together in the theatre. At the same time, though, I'm able to remember how I'd first encountered Mystery Science Theater through text-only MSTings, and how trying to "distinguish the voices" when I got around to writing them myself might have amounted to processing every comment through one of three narrow perspectives.
Then, all of a sudden, one of the "riffs" was a tossed-off reference from Revenge of the Sith. Having dwelt more than I ought to on the Russian-roulette feeling of "having things hit too close," it took me an electric moment to process the reference and admit there seemed no particle of "going on to invite the audience to wallow in shared contempt." Mentioning one of the new Star Wars movies as if it's any other reference was really all I could have asked for. Of course, I still don't know what'll happen with a movie that invites more of those specific references, but there may yet be a balance between "setting myself up that much further for an unfortunate overreaction" and "managing to find a tiny bit more confidence."
In any case, that I've reacted with relief twice now perhaps lets me just sort of accept things I've seen a few mixed opinions of. While Crow and Tom Servo's new voices seem distinct enough in the "host segments," everybody's voices do sort of blend together in the theatre. At the same time, though, I'm able to remember how I'd first encountered Mystery Science Theater through text-only MSTings, and how trying to "distinguish the voices" when I got around to writing them myself might have amounted to processing every comment through one of three narrow perspectives.